Remembrance and Knowing
by corrupted-innocent
Summary: No one has ever tried to put someone's brain back in before. It has unexpected consequences. -- glitch/wyatt, just a tame little speculative drabble.


20/12/2007- so i wrote a drabble-ish kind of thing! first tin man, first glitch/wyatt, but not my first fanfic.

Rating: PG. very tame, slightly angsty and, of course, slash.

Summary: No one has ever tried to put someone's brain back _in_ before. It has unexpected consequences.

Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to L. Frank Baum, SciFi Pictures, and RHI Entertainment - I get no money from writing this, only joy.

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He didn't really remember anything. He _knew_ things, like the equations for figuring out the direction of light from both suns at any given time and place in the OZ. But he didn't remember anything. There were some times, when a smell or a flavor or a sound would suddenly encroach on his mind, when he remembered _everything_, but that hurt and mostly he just slept a lot after that happened. And when he woke up he wasn't any closer to remembering things.

He didn't remember the first few times he had woken up, but he knew when he opened his eyes _this time_ that it wasn't the first time. This time, there was a beautiful woman at his bedside, with lavender eyes, and he smiled at her happily. But then he blinked, and she was gone, and the light coming in from the window was at a different angle.

He woke once to feel a furry paw on his forehead, gentle and tasting like dust and straw and sunshine, but his head hurt a lot after that. Sleep claimed him again.

The next time he surfaced from sleep, there was starlight shining down through the large windows, and someone was in the process of sitting down at the chair beside his bed. The sound of breathing and the movement of cloth burst in his mind and he thought maybe he had whimpered with pain. A hand gripped his and maybe he had fallen back asleep for a moment, but when he next found himself able to focus, the person was still there, fingers stroking slowly over his hand and wrist and forearm like the sound of rain and smell of pine but he didn't fall back asleep again. Instead he twitched his arm, fingers grasping without strength to hold on to the memories. He couldn't, but the familiar stroking hand grasped tightly, and he held on to that instead.

Probably some time later, the hand was still gripping tightly and he _remembered_. He remembered fear and cracking, groaning giant noises and cold. He remembered dust and sunlight and rhythmic motion and a smile on his lips. He remembered pine and crisp air in his lungs and that hand holding his hand (just like it was now) and soft, dry lips on his jaw bone and warm breath. He reveled in the remembering for a long time.

"Hey, sweetheart," a voice said quietly, from the person beside him. The voice was deep and soothing, with a drawl that made him want to giggle, and a thousand sparks like fireworks (sulfur and flames and colors dazzling bright) went off in his mind with a thousand sense-memories at those first words. His mind spasmed and shouted with intense joy and pain and longing; his fingers twitched.

"Doc says you been sleeping all the time, and I can't rightly say I blame you," the voice whispered, and the hand gripping his tightened briefly. "Says you can't hear anything, or remember anything. I guess Raw's been in here with you a bit. Everyone's worried- 'specially DG. That girl is fiercely fond of you. We're all worried." In the quiet, he was shuddering as the waves of thoughts coursed through him- _dorothy gale_ and _my brain!_ and _is it really over?_ and, shouting over everything, _i miss you don't leave me don't let go staystaystay_. His fingers grasped again, faintly.

"This whole major brain surgery thing has really done a number on you- no one rightly knows what went wrong, or if anything went wrong at all, or if it should even have been possible to do it in the first place." The quiet voice went on, and everything else in his head went away in the attempt to absorb the sound of that nameless voice. There was movement, and the gentle touch of lips to the corner of his mouth. "Guess I just want you to know that I'm waiting for you, sweetheart."

He pushed all the panicky rush of thought and sense and memory away, and focused on just one thing- and he squeezed, briefly. It took considerable effort, and the flood of his mind was waiting to swallow him up again when he had done it, so he didn't really know if his sweetheart had felt it or responded to it, but that didn't matter much- he had done it.

The next time Ambrose woke up, it was dawn, and Wyatt was holding his hand.

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i have two very short sequels already posted at my lj, here - jen-chan13./ - but you'll have to friend me if you want to see them, sorry. this is coming out of a rush of spring cleaning and getting a bunch of stuff uploaded to ffn that has been sitting around on lj or my hard drive. hope you enjoy! comments are love, and concrit is always welcome.


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